Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism

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Great snippet, looking forward to full version of it. So regarding Gehenna, am I reading it wrong or her request was something other than helping with gronti? What is she cooking, will they try to wake a work of the Ancestor Gods? Like another lava perhaps or defense measure on a similar level.
 
NutMaster said:
Great snippet, looking forward to full version of it. So regarding Gehenna, am I reading it wrong or her request was something other than helping with gronti? What is she cooking, will they try to wake a work of the Ancestor Gods? Like another lava perhaps or defense measure on a similar level.
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Hah, i read that as awakening the ancestor gods themselves for a moment.

Tbf, according to end times lore (BOOOOOOOO HISSSSSSSSSSS) one of the ancestors themselves, arguably the most important of them all, Vallaya, is still on the planet and napping.

@torroar , purely fun question, this is never going to happen in quest, assuming that part of endtimes is actually cannon, what would it take to awaken her and how would dwarf society as a whole react.

.....
Goddamn, no brain.

You've got to much work at your hands to write a quest where vallaya wakes up in modern warhammer
 
AllenWalker said:
Man, by the time the siege is over, kragg will be a superstar across the whole of dwarfendom
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I mean... he already is? He is arguably the most important dwarf in Karaz Ankor barring the High King himself, and even then that is arguable.

The dude is a living ancestor that is over 1000 years old, running on pure spite and stubbornness in his goal to recovery all the run knowledge lost to his people since the Time of Woes and has contributed to some of his people's greatest achievements in his lifetime.

All he is doing is making his legend more and more impressive, and honestly if he ever does die I'm certain he will be remembered as a minor Ancestor God at least.
 
Staff Notice - You're getting awfully close to a personal attack here.
@HOKKIS
I honestly dont remember if i read something more stupid about the caste system in my life.It is the worse and most cruel system created in the whole history of mankind.
 
NutMaster said:
So regarding Gehenna, am I reading it wrong or her request was something other than helping with gronti? What is she cooking, will they try to wake a work of the Ancestor Gods?
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My bet would be on Gehennon. Outside of Engenners helping ith gear works, Better metalugy and study of Gronti runes would greatly improved similar works and their derivitives.

There is also @soulcake inspiration with adamant and the like. If it can work for Gromnil, She would experiment on other metals on similar processes.

There is also alchemy. Specifiacally the fortyfing brew. If Wizards of Aldorf could design a human version even if inferior, would be great boon to both sides.

Plenty of possibilities honesly.

Edit: a Highly hypothetical question:
What would it take to 'wake up' Silverthumb?
Could we like suck the magic out of him? resustitate with ghyrian? Carve a Rune of Aweakening?
How would Kragg react to that?

A siliy idea
 
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10th Anniversary Boon Vote Choice - By The Ancestors New
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    • By The Ancestors​

    The throng and the armies milled about as was the wont of such masses of bodies. Some manned the barricades, others patrolled, and others sat and waited, or lay upon their bedrolls and slept the sleep of soldiers who know that they may never get another chance. By now, the occasional shaking was almost comforting in its familiarity, if it weren't something indicative of the enemy gathering greater and greater strength which which to try and batter the Three Gates of the Ancestors down. Given dwarf masonry and runework, the gates shouldn't have even been moving at all. But then, neither should the Great Gate of Karaz-a-Karak have ever trembled from any blow, yet in that regard the foot of Gork - or Mork - himself had torn the proud mein of many a longbeard. Even without the wizards of the Magic Colleges providing their ways, the dwarfs were not blind to the enemy outside. Through clever construction and ancient ways, sound and even sight could be funneled with precisely crafted miniscule tunnels and perfectly made mirrors that allowed those behind the gates to peer and listen to what was occuring on the other side. In any case, the defenders of the Everpeak saw that the greenskins had once more begun marshalling their shamans, though many of them still hobbled about, the lingering wounds to their feet seemingly remaining despite most of the other orcs and goblins recovering by now. Trolls battered at the gates day and night with clubs that glowed with ugly green WAAAAGH!! energies, with the occasional swinging thump from one of the titanic metal clubs held by the slave giants. Despite everything, all the promises, all the glories, all the trust in the works of the Ancestors, it was impossible to mistake the fact that dents were starting to be made.

    This time around, the dwarfs would not simply wait around for the damned urks to once more blaspheme upon their great works and earn a great many new Grudges in the Dammaz Kron. There had been whispers aplenty, amongst the commanders, and therefore a storm of conspiracy and speculation amongst the soldiers, about what was to be done.

    When the answer came, it came loudly, and boldly.

    "OH!"

    It came from the depths, the eldest halls and greatest vaults, and with an expanding wave of silent awe and joy amongst the dwarfs.

    "HO!"

    It came with belching steam, and cranking gears, and crackling rope that had been alchemically treated thousands of years ago for optimal tensile strength and durability.

    "HO!"

    It came with thunderous, steady steps of plodding stone carved from quarries mined out before Sigmar breathed his first breath. Of gromril so finely wrought that there was no unpleasant clang or clank as it moved forward.

    "HO!"

    It came as a blend of ancient masteries, with purely of runecraft, and others from ancient pacts and exchanges with those who carried on the legacy of Morgrim himself.

    It was an answer that scarcely could ever have been believed to be breathed into reality by the dwarfs. For so long, had they fallen back, ever backwards, into shrinking populations into fewer and fewer holds. Their greatest creations gone silent for lack of the power and knowledge to reclaim them. Their greatest works never to be replicated, for none could match the Ancestors of the past, Ancestor God or otherwise. This was known. Shamefully, this was the truth that a great many of the dwarf people had learned to accept, that they were destined to decline ere there were nothing but their crumbling creations to be remembered by in the world. A truth turned lie, by the wondrous and stalwart leadership of Thorgrim Grudgebearer, who had through his deeds and words reignited the guttering flame of defiance and kindled the light of hope in the darkening hearts of his people. Yet even those great efforts had seemed to falter with the siege of the Everpeak, the loss of the Great Gate, and incursion of the greenskins.

    No longer.

    It had been spoken of in the tales of Karak Ungor, and in the impeccably done chronicles of the Rememberer Evangeline Hertwig, but even then, so many more had not quite believed in their hearts.

    They did now.

    With mouths open, and some of the longbeards even shedding tears at a sight they never thought to see themselves, the dwarfs watched alongside the mystified humans of the Empire.

    They watched as gronti-duraz walked once more.

    Not the greatest of their kind, no, not yet, but that any walked at all was a marvel. They walked, runes blazing to life upon their bodies, accompanied and technically outnumbered by their admittedly somewhat lesser but nevertheless effective descendant creations in the gronti-jiffaz. Mixtures of runecraft and engineering, crafted in the Time of Woes, awoken to fight once more. At the head of the procession was none other than Kragg the Grim himself, expression as severe as it had ever been, yet he walked with great dignity and presence befitting the one who had once more struck the Rune of Awakening, and had instructed others that it not be lost again amongst other Runelords. Runelords and Runesmiths that walked at the sides and rear of the formation as well, keeping an eye on things. Though he had dared not wake the greatest of the gronti-duraz within the Everpeak's vaults, for he was determined not to suffer the fate of Silverthumb, what he had awoken was a legion of stone, gromril, and truesteel that would serve quite ably indeed.

    Though, perhaps, the severity of his expression had something to do with the gliding woman of gold and silver who strode along with him at the head of the legion, her laughter pointed and loud to draw all the greater attention towards what now marched.

    "Have I not proven my sincerity? My worth?" She said with shocking quiet, the many bangles on her wrist and voluminousness of her sleeve covering her mouth.

    Kragg's frown did not deepen, such a thing was simply not possible given the geographical depth and severity it had long engraved into his face, but his eyes did narrow ever so slightly.

    "Your aid was...acceptable," he finally grumped out, keeping his head high and not even looking towards her, instead his glare was quite locked onto the Gate of Grungni they were now approaching. "Unnecessary, however. I knew what needed to be done."

    "Of course, of course," she nodded deeply, transforming it into a twisting half-spin and skip forward, forever dancing when good simple walking would have done. "And yet, to draw the magic forth in amounts enough to wake those runes...,"

    "I have already considered your request," Kragg ground out.

    For a single second, the Matriarch of the Gold College was still. Only a single second, but notable for that alone.

    "Perhaps," he concluded with a deep nod.

    "Excellent!" She smiled broadly, each barefoot step a heavy thump against the stone. "Excellent."

    "I said perhaps," he repeated, to which the irritating human just smiled again.

    The Gate of Grungni awaited them, and if Kragg was lucky, quite a few urks for him to work out his frustrations on.

    As they walked forwards, the Matriarch of the Gold College reached into one of her sleeves and withdrew from it several thin bars of steel that were linked together with single links of chain. It might have looked a strange necklace to some, were it looped around someone's throat, but its purpose was something else entirely. Instead, to the grumpy annoyance of the dwarfs, the woman unabashedly reached out and grasped for Chamon. The metal began to glow, brightly, like in the heart of forge, and then shockingly began to seemingly melt. Not to the point of becoming a molten pool upon the ground, but rather taking a strange taffy-like texture as she began to twitch and weave her fingers about with the material. To the amazement of a great many of the Imperials watching, who had been stunned by grand works of the Wizards time and again during the march and siege, the woman known as Gehenna quite literally began to crochet a sword together with her bare hands. Individual strands of burning hot metal that should have scorched flesh from bone were woven and interlaced and layered again and again.

    By the time they reached the Gate of Grungni, the sword was complete with hilt sitting comfortably in Gehenna's hand as she idly swung it back and forth.

    "Runelord," the Thane commanding the ironbreakers and irondrakes that formed the most immediate line of defense should the gate have ever been broken open bowed deeply at the waist before the venerable elder.

    "Matriarch," the Reiksmarshal of the Empire, Aloysis Fuerbach, saluted Gehenna, the heavily armed soldiers of the Imperial Foot that also held the gate doing the same in a clattering of steel.

    "We have arrived to perform our duty, and to mete out vengeance," Kragg ground out.

    The Thane, for all that his beard was white, long, and looped several times around his belt, grinned like an eager youth at the terrible rage in the Runelord's voice, and nodded multiple times.

    "Right away, Runelord!" The Thane spun about on his armored heel and held up a fist.

    Two Runesmiths and two Master Engineers were required to open any of the Three Gates of the Ancestor Gods after they had been sealed, and it was just such a team that got to work now. By all rights, such massive edifices of stone and metal should never move swiftly. Sheer weight alone should have demanded such given all natural laws. But the mechanical masteries of the Engineer's Guild were often beyond such things, and yet even then with all the precision of Morgrim Himself in weights and counterweights, levers and pulleys, it would not have been enough. Such momentous movement would surely have allowed the greenskins to be prepared, to have readied themselves, to have noticed, and marshalled themselves. Or, more likely, eagerly plunged towards a rapidly forming gap as the gate opened. But that was what the runes were fore. Flaring bright, gleaming where they had been laid in the time before even Kragg the Grim was born, the runes and ancient magic stored within them went to work. So it was that something which could have required a hundred and more men to even begin to shift seemed to slide open with no discernable friction at shocking speeds.

    Of course, it was the nature of greenskins to act with absurdity and so more than three dozen goblins squeezed forwards cackling and laughing with glee as they brandished their weapons.

    "GRONTI!" Kragg boomed, raising his staff and slamming it upon the ground heavily, the sounds of distant avalanches ringing in the ears. "Rikkazenha," he growled darkly.

    On the other side of the rapidly opening gate was a sea of green in various shades clad in metal and leather, shock and delight and bloodlust equally represented across their bodies with shouts already going up. There were goblins and orcs aplenty, dumb and idiotic troll faces lolling open at the chance at new meals, and squeaking squalling squigs bouncing and frothing at a chance to slake their own animalistic urges. Black orcs in even heavier layers of metal narrowed their eyes, joyful at the sight of enemies and a real fight but intelligent enough to know that the dwarfs would not have opened the gates without reason. Less careful were the mobs of naked savage orcs, slathered with scat and glowing war paint while wielding their weapons of crudely shaped bone and stone. A pair of giants stared down at the creatures before them, covered in bright green and dark black paint in fearsome scrawls across their sagging bellies and slack jaws, froth from fungus bear spilled across their faces. Of the terrifying mutated giants that had helped break open the Everpeak, there was no sign, not yet, but what was there was enough to shatter lesser throngs entirely, a fact realized by every dwarf present down to the beardlings.

    But Kragg the Grim had not brought a lesser throng.

    The Master Runelord of Karaz-a-Karak had brought gronti.

    The size of trolls and ogres, the ancient masterworks did not simply leap into action. But neither were they slow. In fact, in the same disturbing manner as trolls and ogres both, they presented a terrifying aspect of speed and movement that something that large ought to have never possessed. Yet possess it they did. Humongous axes and hammers blazed to life with burning runes, some surrounded in ethereal blazing fire, others crackling with lightning, and even some beginning to flicker and waver in and out of sight as if displaced in reality itself. Shields bearing the grim faces of the three greatest of the Ancestor Gods the size of wagon wheels and larger were brought to the fore as they charged forward in eerie near silence. At least until the elder gronti-duraz, not the Rune Guardians of the Time of Woes, got within sufficient distance of the enemy and their jaws slid open to vent the fury of the Ancestor Gods outwards in great spewing plumes of flames washed over the greenskins and their auxiliary creatures.

    "Well come on then, don't be shy!" Gehenna demanded, and with her many of the Gold College strode forth as well to melt the plentiful arms and armor of the orcs.

    Next came lightning, as the Celestial College made itself known abruptly and without warning.

    "Strike them down, as we foresaw!" Their Patriarch called, reed-thin yet speaking as if he were Taal himself heralding a storm.

    Arrows, arching crossbow bolts, bolts thrown from artillery pieces, angled cannons, and more began to join in as the gronti-duraz waded in. Magic was cast in great flurries, and the cheering and shouting and battle cries were enough to deafen. But none of them, none at all, matched the sheer carnage that the awoken creations of Thungni's line wrought. Mighty black orcs, empowered by the spells of their shamans, swelled with emerald might and charged forward with a whole armory of enchanted weaponry, only to find themselves shattering against the gronti-duraz. Axes clove through whole ranks of orcs at the same time, while humongous stone boots squashed squigs and goblins alike. Poisoned weapons found no purchase, scraping clean off of the gronti-duraz with as much effectiveness as air against a cliff-face. When a shaman glared and bolts of green pure brute force flew outwards with enough strength that it could have pulped an ironbreaker inside their armor, it simply fizzled out to nothing against the sneering face of Valaya upon the shield of one of the golems that appeared to have been made in effigy of the Ancestor Goddess Herself. Before the shaman could do more than gape, the golem spun about, intricately made stone braids with metal spiked ringlets flying about as flails that caught and slew three different orc Big 'Uns charging from behind, and outright threw its tree sized hammer through the air. A battering ram of a hammer flew across the battlefield, shattering all before it, before landing squarely upon the shaman even as the orc tried to summon forth some kind of shield.

    It was there, if you had the eye to see it.

    A split second.

    Stone and metal quirked into a pleased sneer, blazing runelight pouring forth from the gronti-duraz's eyes. With such articulation and smoothness that it could have been flesh, skin, and bone, the matronly golem then raised its fingers and snapped them as boulder crashing together. A rune carved at the base of the humongous hammer's haft burst to life, and the entire hammer ripped itself right back out of the small crater it had made and flew back into its wielders hand whereupon it was swung overhand backwards to bludgeon a troll right down the middle to bisect it. Before the troll could begin to regenerate, as it surely would, the golem opened its mouth and exhaled forth a cone of fire that scorched the meat black and dead within seconds.

    Elsewhere, one of the giants, panicking at the sudden strange arrival of the not-so-small enemies that were flooding outwards and killing so many, fell back upon one of its most primal instincts.

    It roared, and swung its club downwards in a great half-circle arc downwards upon one of the closest ones. Only to stare, shocked, as the club boomed against the floor, not the gronti-duraz, which had sidestepped the blow with remarkable dexterity. Burning red runelight glared back upwards at the giant from beneath particularly beetled brows, while a huge stone mohawk painted a shocking orange-red crowned its head where most other gronti-duraz possessed molded helms to their bodies. This golem held no shield, had been carved and forged without the outwards layers of armor, for all that such distinctions started to fade away with sufficiently powerful runes and stone forms. Instead, it bore two rune-axes, the first of which it slammed down into the club, and to the giant's shock, dragged the weapon halfway out of its grip. Stumbling, drunk, and already naturally clumsy after too many generations of inbreeding, the giant almost fell from the sudden loss in the surprise test of strength. Almost, but not quite. Alas for the dumb brute, that was enough, for the gronti-duraz had already rushed forwards, bowling over and smashing through dozens of greenskins on its way, before with two mighty heaving swings parted a pair of feet from a pair of ankles.

    Then the giant fell, screaming, though that too was soon silenced as the silent grinning leer of the gronti-advanced along its fallen body from the pelvis to the head, axes tirelessly swinging the entire time.

    Truly, for many of the beardlings watching, fighting, it was as if the Ancestor Gods had returned once more.

    All the while, Kragg the Grim smote many a greenskin, hammer and staff acting in tandem. His rage was mighty, but his mind was greater, and he knew that even for all their power and effectiveness, it was possible for the gronti-duraz to be felled. He knew the histories perfectly well, after all, and was no mere beardling to get lost in delusions. The elves had proven such. The servants of the Dark Gods had proven such. And now, as he watched one of the gronti-duraz start to find itself splashed again and again with troll acid that was beginning to etch away at it, as another was flung through the air by a shaman to be dogpiled by more black orcs wielding WAAAAGH!!! empowered weaponry, he knew it to be true yet again. With a blistering glare, he watched the battlefield, and saw the worth of the sally they had made, the sally that would inevitably have to once more retreat behind the Gate of Grungni before they were properly overwhelmed by incoming reinforcements.

    None saw it but the Gods.

    There was the slightest of approving nods at the carnage that the gronti-duraz had enacted.

    It would not save the Everpeak, not yet.

    But it had certainly shifted the odds in their favor.
     
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    • Let the furry of the Ancestors be known once more!

    Now all we need is some giant-sized golems and we can have kaiju battles, lol.
     
    Snorri Klausson: Bah. Took you long enough, beardling. But I s'pose ye got to start somewhere. :V


    Snorri Meeting Gehenna:

    Gehenna: OH HO HO HO!
    Snorri     Klausson: What's this? Have the manlings made their own gronti as well?
     
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    Excellent, excellent. Always good to see our dwarf bros stomping greenskin asses. Now to see how the other anniversary reward will go…maybe Natasha and Freddy's affection meter will FINALLY hit 10 after being stuck at 9.5 for years both in game and irl.
     
    So in terms of size, are these Gronti Hierotitan, Rouge Idols, Terracotta Sentinel sized or are the monstrous cav sized?
     
    EFW3 said:
    So in terms of size, are these Gronti Hierotitan, Rouge Idols, Terracotta Sentinel sized or are the monstrous cav sized?
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    Valerian said:
    Given the Grimnir Gronti comparison to the giant: monstrous cav sized.

    They mostly seem to be around a Troll in height, but thicker/wider since they are scaled up dwarfs.
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    They are stated to be Troll and Ogre sized in text.
    torroar said:
    The size of trolls and ogres, the ancient masterworks did not simply leap into action. But neither were they slow. In fact, in the same disturbing manner as trolls and ogres both, they presented a terrifying aspect of speed and movement that something that large ought to have never possessed.
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